What does not understanding body language mean?

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Those people sound rude. From my experience, people will move aside when they notice I am just standing there about a foot away. When walking, people always move aside and I have seen plenty of people complain online about women and their strollers taking up the whole entire sidewalk. I always think, if I see someone coming towards me, I just move to the side so they wouldn't have to walk in the street to go around me. But some people are just rude and I swear they are the ones who don't have very good social skills and I am the one who is supposed to lack them? Most people will not walk right close to you or push by you or squeeze by you, it's a personal space thing so it's not just you. This is something I had learned as a young adult. I expected anyone would go right by me and squeeze by me because there was still room and I would always be told that someone wants to get through and tell me where to stand.
But either people are very rude or they are not paying attention to their surrounding but if they look at you and then carry on and don't move, they're rude. Or you can tell them "excuse me, I need to get through" because maybe they are oblivious you want to go through so it also seems like NTs have a hard time with body language too or unless they are choosing to ignore it or maybe they have a problem with reading it too. After all lot of people have at least one or two autistic symptoms.

I feel like it's just me that people do this to. I see other people passing eachother in the hall, giving eachother room by shifting toward the right hand wall, or rearranging their conversational huddle to let people by. I even hear them saying excuse me or pardon me or sorry 'bout that when they get out of someone else's way.

But when it's me--I feel completely invisible because they act like there isn't anyone there whose path they are blocking. They just carry on as if there's no one there.

What about walking between two people who are talking? Does that feel uncomfortable to you?

Only if they are standing close together and you would have to squeeze between them. I just go around them then. If they are standing far apart and are just talking across the room, that is fine. They can't just hog up the huge space with their conversation and I am sure if it was private, they would be standing close to each other than standing very far apart. If it were in an aisle and they were standing on one side and there is a large gap between them that will fit one or two shopping carts, I just walk by in between. I don't really pay that much attention to people. I see them and I look at if there is enough room to get through and I also tend to go around because I don't always feel comfortable telling them "excuse me" when I can just go around.




Is it just people who know you do that to you? Does this only happen at school or work?

Mostly it happens at work, and it's people who I don't know who are not there everyday who do it. The patients and their parents. Most of my co-workers obey the basic simple courteous "traffic laws" of navigating hallways and allow traffic to pass in both directions. If they realize they are in the way, or if we surprise eachother in doorways (e.g. opening a door from one side that someone was just about to open from the other side), pretty much all of them will say sorry or excuse me and hold the door for me or I'll hold the door for them and it's all very polite and proper and professional.

But the parents of the patients who are following the nurses to the exam room--they will hog the halls and act like I'm not even there and make it hard to get by. Sometimes they don't even bother to instruct their children in these basic simple manners of sharing the hallway and making room for people going the opposite direction to get by.

It just makes me wonder if I'm unconsciously projecting some sort of body language that communicates that I don't matter, I'm bottom of the totem pole, I'm less than human so it doesn't matter if they brush me aside or bowl me over or knock me into a wall when I try to walk by.

And walking between two people who are talking to eachother, no matter how close they are together or how much room there is between them, feels weird to me.

I have studied articles and such on body language and cannot spot or put into proactive any of them when I am interacting with people. It's like too much is coming in and I can't spot the subtle things everybody else notices.

Someone likes you, they flip their hair or touch their neck, so on and so forth.

And, forget about reading eyes. They're supposed to dilate with desire. A person is interested, dilation. A person wants some thing, dilation. Fear, constriction of pupils.

Can't see it for the life of me.

And, I know I violate some of the rules because of the way I process things. Here is an example I am now completely self-conscious about:
When a person is supposed to be interested, they will not fold their arms and they will lean in. When I am interested, I will fold my arms and sit back and think. That's when I am most involved. Apparently I make strange faces at odd times too.

But, it is very conspicuous to me that I have to stop and evaluate things and it's just so distracting to try and be 'normal' when it isn't normal for me.

I can't see it either. Even if I get what I'm reading when I read about body language in books, I don't understand when I'm actually watching people or talking to them. I just see something's going on, but I don't understand what it means.



I've always wondered about this. I wonder if it's really true of NT's. I know it's not true of me. I play with my hair all the time, it's one of my stims. It is in no way connected with flirting, and I don't think it's very cool to tell guys that if a girl plays with her hair it means she wants to sleep with you. If I touch my neck, it's probably because it itches or my hair is tickling it.



As I avoid looking at people's eyes as much as possible, this is also a non-starter. Even if I noticed someone's eyes dilating, I wouldn't know what it was for: one of those three things (desire, interest, fear) or something else. What if the pupil dilation is just because of the lights dimming?



I've tried to apply this reading of folding or opening the arms, and been told that he crossed his arms because he felt cold and was trying to warm himself up. Just another example of how theoretical knowledge of what body language is supposed to mean fails to translate to real life. Also whenever I cross my own arms now I wonder if the person I'm talking to will think that I'm displeased and closing myself off from what they're saying whether I am or not.



Yeah. Even when a Neurodiverse person tries to do this, it's often obvious that it isn't natural, because the flow of conversation stops while we ponder the meaning of the nonverbal signals. It's even worse than when we stop to run the words we mean to say through the T.H.I.N.K. filter to make sure we're saying what we mean to say and considering the possible responses and reactions to it. It slows down the conversation, and Neurotypicals don't seem to like that much. It makes them think we're stupid.

1.) I gotta steal the "T.H.I.N.K. filter" thing. It's broken many times in me and it gets me into hot water many times. And, even when it makes it through that filter, it can still get muddled.

2.) Not sure stupid is the thing they will always be drawn to. I've never been accused of being stupid. Just disconnected, confused or off in my own world. But never stupid.

Some people have a very broad definition of stupid. It includes not being able to read their minds, not sharing all their opinions, not saying exactly what they want to hear when they want to hear it, and being slow and deliberate in your manner of speaking.

Very true. When I was a kid, I was labeled as stupid by my peers. My mom told me when people say someone is stupid, they mean in socially areas like someone is socially ignorant or socially clueless, absent minded, and I told her kids thought I was stupid when I was little. I was called that a lot in school including ret*d. If I wasn't ret*d, I had to be stupid. If I wasn't stupid, I had to be ret*d. Kids were not aware of other disabilities and brain differences and learning differences. They only knew of smart, stupid, and ret*d. Even I didn't know either. I knew of some kids being more different than others and some "normal" kids acting different but I didn't know of brain difference either. I knew I was different but I didn't understand why so that led me to having low self esteem and the verbal abuse didn't help either and by 8th grade I did think I was ret*d even though no one had called me that in two years but several students had asked me that year if I was or not so that was a good way to reinforce my belief I really was.

But I notice stupid is a relative term because when people say it they call anyone stupid who doesn't agree with them and share their perspective or when someone is ignorant and not informed, refusal to learn and be educated on something, not knowing of a singer or incident or someone famous or a music group, or when someone has a twisted view and perspective on life or when they post something illogical. People will also label slow learners as stupid. They will just say someone isn't very smart than say they are dumb or stupid. But stupid doesn't always mean lack of intelligence when it's used. I do say there is a difference between ignorance and stupidity. Ignorance just means lack of knowledge of something, stupidity is lack of intelligence.

This is long, but I needed to write it to help me think things through.

There's one instance of not getting body language that I just remembered. It's extremely obvious and typical body language, too. And I had just convinced myself that I don't have a problem understanding body language. So maybe I do.

So I just remembered that starting when I was a kid, adults would hold out their hand for me to shake hands. It probably began around age 8 or so, when adults first started to introduce themselves in that way. I guess maybe they were trying to treat me as an adult to be respectful. I don't know.

I would just stare at the outstretched hand. Someone (likely one of my parents) would have to prompt me to shake the person's hand. This happened numerous times. I still remember being a teenager and still doing this! A person would hold out his/her hand and I'd just stare for a few seconds before shaking hands. I knew by this time what it meant, but I didn't need to do it often enough, and so I needed time to process what the "appropriate social interaction protocol" was before I understood what to do. And there would be a pause. Not extremely long, but enough to make it apparent that I wasn't responding normally. Other people see a hand, and just shake hands naturally and quickly, without thinking. Nowadays, I still have to think about it, but there's usually only a slight pause that doesn't seem to catch notice. Maybe less than a second. But I notice it.

Just a few months ago there was another instance of this happening to me. I was leaving an appointment, and someone held out their hand for me to shake as I left. The hand was held at an angle, instead of just being outstretched in front of the person, because the person was to my side as I was walking out the door. Aa result, it didn't look the way that it normally does. I had no idea what to do at first. I had a feeling of panic. Then I finally got it and shook hands. But there was a long pause, and I could tell that the person had noticed that I had hesitated, and I'm sure that my emotions were "written all over" my face. I have a hard time masking my emotions. It was very awkward.

And as I'm thinking about it more, I have a lot of trouble with reading body language. It's the same kind of confusion that I have about knowing what to do in social situations. I have to think about what it means. I will see a behavior, and I'm instantly in a panic because I don't know what it means or what I should do. Sometimes somebody will want to hug me, but I won't understand at first. Or make a gesture with his/her hands. I just won't know what they want! I'm thinking Oh no, what am I supposed to do? What do they want from me? It's awful!

Back in high school, people (usually guys) would want to "fist bump", or do some other strange interactive hand gesture, and I would have no idea what to do. Eventually I had a general idea, but still had to think about it, and usually a comment was made about my reaction. Or the person would laugh because my behavior was strange and unexpected. I'm sure I seemed unfriendly or strange. But I was just confused. To this day, it would still happen if I bothered to go out in public or had male friends.

People will point to things, or make another gesture towards me, and I won't understand. If the environment is loud, and talking isn't possible, I won't understand the gestures that the another person makes to try to communicate with me. And they usually seem exasperated.

When I first read this thread, I was thinking of body language only in terms of emotion. I believe that I can read the unconscious body language that people display which indicates their emotional state. It's similar to how I process facial expressions. A far as I can tell, it's usually instinctual and effortless for me. So that part of my social understanding is either normal, or I have adapted enough so that it's automatic.

That's how I can tell when I've totally screwed up, said something strange or wrong, or when people disapprove of me or dislike me. I get it. I see the confusion, disdain, amusement, surprise. And so I developed social anxiety, as I knew that I was screwing up in some way and being ridiculed. I know that people think I'm strange. I know that I don't fit in. It's painfully obvious.

It's the voluntary, deliberate body language that confuses me. That kind that is used to communicate without words, to indicate to me that I should do something or respond in a certain manner. It's so stressful to be surrounded by others and expected to behave and react in a certain way, but not know how. Even when I learn a new rule, I have to think about it. It's not automatic.

This is one of those areas I never twigged I had issues with until I started to reexamine things through my new knowledge of AS.

Example 1: on my first date with my now fiancée, at the end we spent nearly an hour sat next to each other talking. She later revealed to me that she spent that whole time waiting for me to make some kind of move to kiss her and after a while started wondering whether maybe I didn't want to! So I'm fairly sure I was missing some fairly big clues there.

Example 2: I had noticed that oftentimes when I would speak to one of my colleagues, he would do this kind of expression where he would sort of squint one eye. I later found out, reading something about body language that this actually indicates he was being condescending. However at the time, I kind of admired his seeming confidence in the job and so, inadvertently, started copying some of his mannerisms - including that one! So it turns out that while I was trying to appear confident I was actually sending a very different message by accident - oops!

Well, I did not know that. I squint when I'm thinking or really paying attention. I seem to do a lot of those things backwards as I learn things like the folding arms and leaning in or back. My motions are not mechanical or forced. Just apparently backwards. And, well, sometimes a bit spastic.

I seem to remember it was in a context that it meant that, rather than all the time. I think if they were smiling or grinning with it? Or Jupiter is in retrograde, something like that... I shall return to Google and see if I can find the section of article I found before, to clarify it!